The Cinnamon Peeler

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
And leave the yellow bark dust
On your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
You could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to you hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
--your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in the water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
you climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women
the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume

and knew

what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
Peeler's wife. Smell me.

The Cinnamon Peeler, by Michael Ondaatje
 

Sigh

A physically comedic dance piece about falling in love at the supermarket.

Falling in love, yes.  But this lovely little piece is proof positive there is joie de vivre in life, even in the most ordinary of circumstances.
 

Thy Beauty's Doom

Based on Sonnets 14 and 66 by William Shakespeare, Thy Beauty’s Doom is inspired by the paintings and artwork of, and dedicated to, Maple Batalia, a 19-year-old Simon Fraser University student, model, actress and aspiring doctor who was gunned down in the campus parkade after a late night of studying.

Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck;
And yet methinks I have Astronomy,
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well
By oft predict that I in heaven find:
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself, to store thou wouldst convert;
   Or else of thee this I prognosticate:
   Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.

Sonnet 14

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
   Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
   Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

Sonnet LXVI
 

Salvador Dali - My favorites

The Broken Bridge and the Dream

Metamorphosis of Narcissus

The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus

The Persistence of Memory, by Salvador Dali (4)

(image credit)

Let me suggest a psychological view on "The Persistence of Memory," i.e. that of trauma.

First, there is a decidedly stark theme and despondent tone to the painting. It's not outright, but rather quietly, horrifying, as we see some figure - animal, part-human, monster? - in the center.

Some people who experience a trauma cannot help but re-live the trauma, i.e. via "flashbacks." It is as if they cannot forget what traumatized them; it is as if they are doomed to remember it forever; they see it everywhere they go. This is what I believe the soft clocks represent.

So am I saying that Dali is expressing some trauma in his life through this painting? Perhaps I am. His parents told him, when he was a boy, that he was the reincarnation of a dead brother, who was a theme in his paintings.

Also, Dali's beloved mother died about 10 years before he painted "The Persistence of Memory." It was quite traumatizing for him, as it "was the greatest blow I had experienced in my life. I worshiped her... I could not resign myself to the loss of a being on whom I counted to make invisible the unavoidable blemishes of my soul."

If my thinking is correct, then I can argue that painting was a form of psychoanalysis for Dali and perhaps the means by which he came to grips with whatever trauma he may have experienced.
 

The Persistence of Memory, by Salvador Dali (3)

(image credit)

This interpretation (below) by Tan Sertthin is pretty good, I think. Dali certainly probed the unconscious as both a source and a subject of his art. So Sertthin's references to dreams and symbolism make sense.

There is a fine line between a dream and a memory. A dream only happens when humans are in a state of sleep. A memory has the ability to appear in any time of the day in the human mind. Humans recall their memories to deal with their current situations. Memories can manifest in dreams. Dreams are memories that are distorted by fantasy. Both dream and memory reveals the state of the human’s subconscious mind. Dali’s goal is to depict coded messages that are hidden in the subconscious world. 

Salvador Dali, a surrealist painter challenged himself to portray “hand painted dream photographs”. In order to paint these images, Dali subjected himself into self-inducing hallucinations, which is a process called paranoiac- critical method. The melting and distorted clocks represent the frozen time where dreams take place. Dali mocks the human society’s view on keeping track of time by painting the powerless distorted clocks melting away in the dream world. In “reality”, time is powerful and it rules and limits the humans in their daily routine. However in a state of dreams, time is irrelevant. Dali also painted his hometown in the horizon of the image, which reveals Dali’s attempt of recollecting his childhood memories. The distorted face implanted in the middle represents the artist’s self-portrait. In the world of dreams, memories can be distorted. Dali represents the malleability of memories and dreams by painting the solids into liquid (watches) and the liquids into solids (water). The tree is inorganically grown on man-made material and the ants are eating a time piece made out of metal. The environment feels deep, lonely, quiet, and still. Humans are wired to think in one dimension. We think of time as a linear concept. We reason with cause and effect. Our perception of what is right or wrong is based on how our brain is wired. Surrealists, on the other hand, believe that the rational world that society has so much faith is ridiculous. Surrealist artists are known for humor, sarcasm, and wordplay. The word “persistent” contradicts with the image depicted- melting clocks, red ants, distorted faces, and desert symbolize desolation and decay. The combination of a sarcastic title and the strategic placement of concepts reveal Dali’s attack on the rationale.

The Persistence of Memory, by Salvador Dali (2)

Salvador Dali painted "The Persistence of Memory" in 1931, when he was just 27 years old.

What does this painting mean, and what is it all about?

Sigmund Freud

Some have interpreted "The Persistence of Memory" in a Freudian perspective: e.g. The soft clocks represent impotence, even emasculation.

Maybe, but I'm not so sure that's right.

Albert Einstein

Some have invoked Einstein and his notion of time dilation, from the Theory of Special Relativity.

Yes, time dilation does challenge the idea that time is unchanging. Specifically, the closer we travel to the speed of light, the slower time moves. Moreover, if my understanding is correct, if we can somehow travel faster than the speed of light, time actually starts moving backward.

In either case, time dilation is really not about soft clocks. So this reference vis-a-vis "The Persistence of Memory" doesn't sound correct.